A disarming warmth is in place as we settle into our seats. The curtain is up. There's a little smoke in the air. The stage is stripped back. Six musicians are tuning up: singers, cello, violin. It feels familiar, comfortable. Then without warning, two drums break into the most perfect rain shower imaginable: a welcoming skin on skin. The other musicians bring palm to palm, hands as gentle percussion. Polaroid Feet, created in 2001 by Indian classical exponent Gauri Sharma Tripathi, and part of this deftly wrought programme reprised from 2009-10, begins our evening with an exquisite rain-way to heaven.

As the small band of international musicians from London, India and Austria build kaleidoscopic patterns of rhythm, Akram Khan, dancer, choreographer, modestly charismatic showman, steps out from a central shaft of light, the literal star, bells shimmering around his ankles, feet drumming the ground, sole on soul, those all-important hands working the space like a pair of hungry hummingbirds. He darts and spins with a gliding, repetitive grace that nods to the music and musicians, weaving magic with the textures of kathak, the ancient dance form of northern India. With Khan masterfully in charge, transcendence is in the air.

Polaroid Feet blends into Tarana, another superb classical piece by Sri Pratap Pawar. Whirring with energy, Khan's pleasure as performer is both his and ours. We are delighted, too, that he introduces his company during a pause before the short, miraculous improvisation of Unplugged brings the first half to joyous conclusion.

Akram Khan dances the female role of ­Gandhari from the Indian story, Mahabharata. Photograph: Murdo Macleod

All change after the interval. The bells are off in Khan's 2009 work, Gnosis (knowledge), inspired by a story from the Mahabharata that tells of Gandhari, the wife who blindfolded herself for life to empathise with her blind prince. It's a massive tale abbreviated into a dramatic duet of ambiguous characterisation across gender and relationship (mother, wife, son, husband), drawing Kathak into a psychologically charged abstraction.

Joining Khan is Fang-Yi Sheu, a leading interpreter of the Martha Graham tradition. She explodes brilliantly into life, to the rattle of a military drum, her stance triangular, regal, her gestures grand and piercing. But her power falters as he/she tries to navigate the space, an action only possible with a stick.

An almost implausible wealth of meaning is encapsulated in this brief rendition of relationship, loss, wisdom and faith, but there is raw beauty here. And when Khan's head convulses with intensity at the moment of possession, it is a stupendous moment. Somewhere, the light is switched on.